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Human Achievement Hour on March 24th

What is Human Achievement Hour?

Human Achievement Hour is the Competitive Enterprises Institute’s annual celebration of innovation and progress. During this hour, people around the world pay tribute to human ingenuity and advancements in every field from healthcare and energy to communications and transportation.

These achievements by entrepreneurs and innovators allow us to live richer and fuller lives. They also help us solve problems and protect ourselves and our families in unpredictable situations, like emergencies and disasters.

Relaxing at home with plenty of food, heat, and hot water for your family?

However you spend the hour, please remember that human ingenuity, affordable energy, and the freedom to create and innovate are making life better for billions of people around the world every day—from life expectancy and disease treatment to literacy rates and increased employment. Throwing up barriers and restrictions that slow down these improvements have real costs, especially for the poor and most vulnerable among us.

History of Human Achievement Hour:

Originally launched as an alternative to “Earth Hour,” an activist campaign that calls on people to show their concern about climate change by turning off their lights for an hour, Human Achievement Hour challenges people to celebrate human ingenuity and our ability to solve problems creatively.

Today, some environmental activists view mankind as a plague upon an otherwise pristine and virtuous planet, calling for a smaller human population, limits on energy use, and government restrictions on valuable new technology. Rather than putting a vibrant economy and human know-how to use, we hear fearmongering about living in a resource-constrained world – poorer than our ancestors – with government restrictions on what we can grow, use, mine, harvest, and create.

This is an overly-pessimistic vision of our shared future that ignores how affordable energy sources—like oil, natural gas, and coal—are vital to human survival. It also fails to explain why, even as population has boomed over the last 50 years, people around the globe are healthier and wealthier than ever before.

Technology, affordable energy, and the competitive economies that brought electricity to the developed world are precisely what will allow us to continue to prosper as we address the global challenges ahead. Instead of sitting in the dark, Human Achievement Hour asks us all to celebrate the human spirit—and support a free society in which ever greater success is possible.